


burn out

by vatonages



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Memories, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Mention of Tobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 10:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24469642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vatonages/pseuds/vatonages
Summary: “I wish you’d quit,” she says, and it startles him. “Get out now while you’re ahead, while there’s still time,” She squeezes his hand back. Her eyes look wet with tears, even as her face is kind.“But you’re just like me,” she says sadly, still smiling. “So I know you’re not going to. You’re not going to until it’s too late, because you can’t even imagine it, because you can’t believe something like that would ever happen to you. I can’t get mad at you for that. I was like that too, Reid. I was.” A tear slides down her cheek. Reid wonders if it’d be too much to reach out and wipe it away. He deems it too risky, and stays still.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	burn out

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Season 2, deals with Elle's PTSD after The Fisher King. I think Elle gets talked about very negatively, but I don't think she was a bad person, and her character makes me really sad for her.

Elle shows up to the BAU with her hair cut short.

More accurately, it looks like it was sawed off in a fit of borderline psychosis, the ends broken and uneven like they were cut off with a serrated knife, and then a hairstylist tried to fix it, even it out, soften up the look. 

They failed. It looks drastic on her, jarring, and her face is the same but somehow still so different as she stands there.

Reid says he likes her haircut, but it doesn’t suit her, and he can’t help but think she’s trying to look like someone else entirely.

She comes back too fast, suspiciously fast. It wasn’t enough time. Reid tries not to stare at her, put her on edge. There’s no way she’s recovered already. The body heals relatively quickly, given the proper circumstances, but the heart and the soul and most importantly, the mind, take an incredibly long time to recover. Sometimes they never do. 

Reid knows statistics on this. PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They say it only happens in the battlefield, when you’re a soldier. They’re wrong.

They used to call it shell shock. Every Fourth of July they warn the veterans in his old neighborhood that there will be fireworks. Their wives cringe and try to distract them from the sounds outside, the explosions that trick their minds into thinking they’re back in the midst of war. Reid thinks that’s the scariest part of PTSD, that you can cognitively be aware that something is not true, and yet the sensory information confounds you, and you get brought back against your will. 

Reid also knows that, anecdotally rather than based in fact, women who suffer traumatic events tend to cut their hair. It might also be a coincidence, not causation at all but correlation. It may also just be that Elle wanted a change. Still, though, Reid thinks it’s worth the consideration.

  
  
  


Elle is too eager to be back, and it’s like she has something to prove. She tries to trick Reid into letting her back to the crime scene. Hotch gives her suspicious looks, and Reid knows Hotch is thinking what he’s thinking, that there’s something off about this.

But Reid isn’t in the business of realizing something is off, and not doing anything about it. He has a natural concern, a curiosity that propels him forward.

So, he checks up on Elle, knocks on her hotel room door with a nervous smile on his face, hoping that his lifetime skill of being seen as a non-threat comes in handy one more time, that having a man in her private space won’t make her panic. He stands in the hallway until she invites him in, not looking particularly happy nor upset at the sight of him.

On the table, she has a glass full of liquor that has more than a few sips taken out of it. It’s full of ice. It’s a drink that Reid can imagine a cultured old man drinking at a mahogany bar while in a tailored suit. 

He sits down across from her at her invitation, like an awkward little vampire in a dress shirt that’s too big on him.

“You really need to iron your clothes,” Elle says. “You can dress as professional as you want but with those wrinkles? Come on, man.”

Elle has little bottles of liquor in her purse like pieces of gum, pours one into a glass for him. He takes it to be polite, doesn’t intend on actually drinking it, but takes a sip to appease her anyways. Then another. Social drinking. Social norms. Reid can’t watch her drink and not touch his. He feels like he’s abandoning her. They’ve all abandoned her so many times before. 

“You ever burn out?” Elle says.

“No,” Reid says honestly. Burning out was never an option. Burning out for him meant horrible, disastrous consequences. Even as a little boy, he knew that his brain was his only ticket out, his only way to help his mom get what she needed. 

The child psychologist he had to see in high school was specially brought in because everyone else was 14 or 18 and Reid was 12 instead. 12, and shoved into lockers and laughed at and tormented. 

He was something of a beacon for adults that dealt with troubled kids back then, which was distressing because he spent a large amount of energy each day trying to blend in. She said Reid was peculiar, and precocious. Reid shifted nervously in his seat, but then she started to say other things, things Reid didn’t know how to feel about.

_ (“You know,” she had said. “I know that you’re unwilling to give me information. And you’re smart, because I know that you know if you gave me the right information I could do something that would be good for you in the long run, but would hurt very bad right now. I know you know that you’re doing this, and I can’t stop you. I can’t force you to tell me what I want to know, even if I know it’d help you, even if I have my own suspicions,” Reid shifted some more, wanted to tap his fingers or his foot but didn’t want to show her any more anxiety than he already had.  _

_ “I just want to tell you that given the circumstances I can’t prove you live in, it’s amazing that you’ve turned that into a drive to be better, to be more. A lot of kids in your situation would fall apart, give up on school, on life, and waste away. I can’t blame them. It’s not easy to deal with that. But it’s incredible that you’re like this, Spencer. I think it’s really admirable. I’m going to let you leave the office now, okay? But I just needed to tell you that.”) _

“No,” Reid says again after a moment’s consideration. “I haven’t,”

“Ugh,” Elle groans. “You don’t get it,” She sounds disappointed, but not surprised. Maybe she doesn’t want him to get it. Maybe she does. 

“You want ice?” she says after a minute. “It’s in the fridge,” she gestures to the hotel mini fridge, ready to get up. Reid waves a hand.

“No, no. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” she says, and takes another sip. Maybe calling it a sip is too polite. A swig, then.

“You know, Elle,” Reid tries cautiously. “I thought about you a lot while you were gone,” Elle rolls her eyes.

“This isn’t gonna be some love confession, is it? Because I can’t really deal with that right now,” Reid laughs, a half smile, but it’s gone just as quick.

“No, no,” he says hurriedly. “I’m just saying. I wondered if you were doing okay. I know I didn’t reach out, but I didn’t know if it would- I just...didn’t want to bother you.” His eyebrows furrow as he looks into the glass. He takes another sip, pauses, drains it. He winces at the burn but Elle looks slightly impressed. She raises another mini bottle in askance and when he nods, she pours. This time she clinks their glasses together.

“Cheers,” she says. “I suppose you know how to say that in another language.” The thing about Elle is that everything she says sounds bitter, even when she’s kidding, but Reid knows people are not born like that. They are made that way by things that happen. Things like a father dying when you’re young, or getting shot in the chest in your own home.

“Multiple,” Reid says, the words flooding his mind. “Um,  _ geonbae, salud, za zdorovie…” _ Elle nods, the motion saying  _ Yup, there it is.  _

“It wouldn’t have bothered me,” Elle says.

“Hm?” Reid asks.

“If you checked up on me. It, um, I wouldn’t have been annoyed or anything. I’m not-” Elle takes a deep breath. 

“I’m not  _ annoyed.  _ I know it’s hard to believe that, because of how I talk but that’s not it. I’m not annoyed, I’m just... _ scared,  _ and angry all the time and I feel like a wild animal or something.” Reid’s eyes soften. Elle finishes her drink. It’s not her first of the night.

“Elle,” he says gently. “You experienced a traumatic event,” His lips quirk in sympathy. 

“I know, I know,” she sighs. “I saw the psychiatrist, we talked about it. It was a woman, by the way, the psychiatrist” she says. Reid nods. “It had to be a woman.”

  
“I know you must get tired of hearing the same thing but...I promise the way you feel only makes perfect sense. It’s a psychological wound, it _literally_ alters your brain.”

“You think I have PTSD,” she says, snorting. She sounds fed up, puts her hands in the air.

“I don’t  _ think,”  _ Reid says. “I know.”

“You don’t  _ know.  _ This might be the one thing you don’t know. You’re such a smartass.”

“Randall Garner is dead, Elle. I saw it. He tried to blow us all up. He had the explosive strapped to his chest. The whole house went up in flames. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Morgan told me your pants caught on fire,” Elle laughs. “Your ass was almost toast.” 

“He put me out pretty fast,” Reid says. “But, uh, that’s not the point.” Elle stops laughing. Her face is serious, eerily calm. Reid waits for her to strike, knows it’s coming.

“I felt his hand twist in my wound,” Elle says. “In my chest!” Reid exhales heavily at that, the idea of it.

“He drew on the wall with my blood! That sick bastard, like he was fucking finger painting.” Reid looks around, feels as though he’s at a loss.

“He’s dead, Elle.” That’s all he can think to say. “He’s dead, he blew to little microscopic pieces.” Elle is smiling at him now. 

“He’s never going to die, Reid,” she says.

Reid wants to scoff at her, how irrational she’s being. She isn’t making any sense. How can she still be afraid? They know for a fact he didn’t make it out alive. She’s safe now. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the symptoms of PTSD. He reads the DSM-5 like a book of fairytales some nights when he can’t sleep. Secretly, he hopes he doesn’t recognize any of the symptoms developing in himself.

But he just can’t understand how she can really think he’s out there, not when Reid is telling her himself that he saw Garner die.

“Elle,” he says. He wants to understand. He’s never not been able to understand before, but Elle looks far away. 

“You know how he survived that last house fire?” Elle says distantly. “How he had all those burns?”

“He didn’t survive this one!” Reid says, not unkindly. “Elle, I promise-”

“This time,” Elle says. She’s smiling. “The fire is in my mind.” She raises her eyebrow at Reid as she lifts her glass. She counts 1, 2, 3, before she hits the bottom of it on the table and knocks it back.

Reid, a little slow on the uptake, very little experience at all playing drinking games, drains his a half second too late. He always catches on eventually.

When he looks in her eyes for a moment, right before she remembers she’s being watched, she looks terrified. She never looks terrified.

Reid puts a hand on her hand. It’s all he can do. He’s never been a comforting person. People aren’t comforted by facts or statistics the way he is. They want warm words, they want something irrational to believe in. Reid can’t give them that. He lacks that warmth they want, but Elle still smiles at him, like she knows he’s trying, like he’s the first person to try.

“You’re too young,” she says. “Your brain will catch on fire, too.”

“Morgan will put me out,” Reid tries to joke. His smile is weak.

“I wish you’d quit,” she says, and it startles him. “Get out now while you’re ahead, while there’s still time,” She squeezes his hand back. Her eyes look wet with tears, even as her face is kind.

“But you’re just like me,” she says sadly, still smiling. “So I know you’re not going to. You’re not going to until it’s too late, because you can’t even imagine it, because you can’t believe something like that would ever happen to you. I can’t get mad at you for that. I was like that too, Reid. I was.” A tear slides down her cheek. Reid wonders if it’d be too much to reach out and wipe it away. He deems it too risky, and stays still.

“But I can still be mad at everything else. For making me this way.” Reid goes to open his mouth, but Elle interrupts him.

“Don’t ever think that it won’t happen to you,” she says. “It does. It does happen. And you never thought it could ever be you. You always thought it would be someone else. But it’s you. You’re who it happens to. That’s why you never see it coming. That’s how it gets you.”

  
  


Reid stays, finishes a couple more drinks. He’s drunk now, too. Elle’s been drunk for a while. She falls asleep on the couch, exhausted physically and mentally. It all happens so fast. Reid doesn’t even remember her falling asleep.

“Elle. Elle,” he says softly, says it until her eyes open. Her hypervigilance means she gasps, and the air rushing into her lungs sounds like a shout, a harsh, abrupt sound that makes Reid jump with its suddenness and volume. He shushes her.

“It’s me, Elle,” he says. “It’s Reid. You fell asleep on the couch. I just thought we should get you to the bed.” Elle nods drowsily. Her eyelids are heavy. Reid walks her to the bed and she gets under the covers. She’s still in work clothes, Reid notices, like she’s always ready to leave.

Right as Reid turns to leave, just as Elle is teetering on the brink of unconsciousness, and honestly, Reid thought she fell asleep several minutes ago, she whispers something.

“What’s that, Elle?” he says, getting close to her. It reminds him of how things were back in Vegas when he was little, how his mom was always exhausted, always saying something inaudible, and the constant craning of his neck to make out her words. 

“Your brain is gonna catch on fire,” she slurs. Reid frowns, says nothing. He knows she’ll be asleep soon, reaches for the doorknob,

“No one will be able to put it out,” she says, and then Reid leaves.

The lighting of the hotel hallway at 3:40 in the morning is eerie, feels sterile and inhospitable. Hotels feel...unnatural and claustrophobic. If it weren’t for his line of work, Reid would never want to spend so much time in them, not even to go on vacation. 

Reid gently sways from side to side as he makes his way back to his room, the alcohol and exhaustion hitting him extra hard by now. Reid can tell everyone’s asleep because he can’t feel their energy anymore, but he would never say that, because then they would think he’s crazy. 

Reid never wants anyone to think he’s crazy.

The room door gently beeps as Reid holds up the key fob to it. He’s rooming with Morgan, who is asleep currently, just like Reid should be. His face is relaxed, and his back is to the windows, which means his body is oriented towards the door, ready to jump into action, even in his sleep. Just like Elle. It makes Reid feel guilty for the way he collapses into a heap of long limbs and exhaustion, and he’ll do it anywhere. Office chairs, airplane couches, stiff hotel beds…

(“Do you know how much dead skin is in those things?” Reid has asked when they landed. “An average of-” He tried to say, but everyone had groaned. Hotch held a hand up for him to stop.

“That information should be distributed solely on a need-to-know basis,” Hotch said. “And...and none of us need to know,” Morgan snorted, JJ smiled, and Elle just sat there, her face as blank as a mannequin’s.)

  
  


A few days later, Elle kills a man.

Not a man, he’s a rapist. A serial rapist. He’s not innocent. Reid would admit that the man deserves it. He’s a monster, and he needs to be stopped. 

But, as a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Hotch says, as for whether or not the rapist should die, well, that is not their decision to make. 

He knows Hotch would agree with them.

  
  
  


It goes like this.

They use Elle as bait and she freaks, pulls out her gun. Reid really can’t blame her but she fucks up the whole operation. 

They don’t handle the legal part of dealing with unsubs, even though Hotch used to be a prosecutor, even though he could surely still run laps around defense in court, but a stunt like Elle’s means the unsub won’t even get that far, and Hotch lets her know this. They have to let the guy go, and it sucks, and it’s wrong, and someone else will definitely get hurt, but they didn’t get enough on him to bag him. 

So Elle does it herself. 

  
She gets let go and Reid doesn’t even get to say goodbye. In truth, she left a long time ago. She fails her psych evaluation, and Reid would venture she doesn’t even to pass. She’s tired. It’s not a temporary state of being for her anymore. It’s all the time, chronic, and she just wants some rest. That exhaustion makes some people give up, makes them weary, withdrawn. But it just makes Elle angry. 

  
  


_ “I like you, you know? You’re a nice kid,” Elle says. “It’s why I’m telling you this. I want things to be better for you,” _

When he finally hobbles away from Tobias’ body, quickly growing cold on the ground, he wishes he would have listened.


End file.
